A few months back I had to make the decision whether to go with a diaphragm clutch and remove the spring or buy another B&B clutch and leave the spring in.
I have read a lot of stories on how easy it is to remove the spring using the washer method and also about the battles some people had getting the spring out.
I decided in the end not to try and remove the spring expecting a battle. So I went just bought another B&B clutch.

Look at the pictures below. At the time, they helped me make my decision to not mess with the spring.

The first one is with the pedal all the way up. The spring coils are slightly open.

The second picture is with the pedal all the way to the floor. The coils are hardly open.

I had expected that when I put the pedal all the way to the floor that the coils in the spring open up with decent gap for the washers, but that was not the case as you can see.